What did Chavismo fail? A balance sheet from the left opposition is a new book written by Simón Rodríguez and Miguel Sorans, our comrades from the International Workers’ Union-Fourth International (IWU-FI). Both authors are leading members in their respective countries of origin: Simón Rodríguez in Venezuela as a member of Partido Socialismo y Libertad (Freedom and Socialism Party) and Miguel Sorans, a longtime member of Izquierda Socialista (Socialist Left) in Argentina.

We present here a PDF copy to our readers and welcome any feedback on the arguments espoused in this important publication that looks at the current crisis facing Venezuela with a critical eye.

Finally, an event that seemed unthinkable a while ago materialized. The images of Trump and Kim Jong-un at their summit in Singapore already have gone to the picture album of history with others like the image of Nixon and Mao in Beijing in 1972. But in reality, it is very far from those protagonists. Not only because of the difference in personalities but because here there was “much ado about nothing”. Many commentators agree it was a summit empty of concrete agreements and more of a great show. However, the show is part of a counterrevolutionary political agreement.

Of the four points of the communiqué, the first three, dedicated to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, return to peace in a peninsula formally in war, and denuclearization, do not have commitments, or realizations, or dates. The fourth is a commitment of humanitarian order also without dates, although very specific regarding the recovery and repatriation of prisoners of war and missing persons. There are collateral results: Kim Jon-un’s previous goodwill gesture, with the dismantling of Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site, and Trump’s subsequent prize when he declared that “there will be no more war games” in South Korea, referring to the annual joint manoeuvres whose suspension North Korea demands.

Many intentions and nothing concrete. What is the agreement, then? What does each one draw from this summit? Trump appears as the supposed “solver” of a great world conflict that could, according to imperialist propaganda, have led to a “nuclear war”. And Kim, the pseudo-socialist dictator of North Korea, legitimizes his reactionary regime. This is the truth of the summit and the pact within the lines. Kim conceals he is going towards a “denuclearization” without dates or deadlines and Trump recognizes Kim and guarantees they do not intend to question his dictatorial one-party regime. This is why human rights were not even discussed. It is the same agreement that the United States has had for decades with China and Vietnam. Meanwhile, the so-called “communists” have already restored capitalism and installed multinationals in their countries. With the guarantee that in China and Vietnam there are hunger wages and worker strikes are prohibited.

In this way, Trump, the one accused of “militarism”, who would put at stake “world peace”, who adds fuel to the conflict in the Middle East, for example, supporting Zionism, comes out as the great “peacemaker”. He gets a great political achievement but only of image because in reality there has always been little possibility of unleashing a “nuclear war” with North Korea.

Imperialism always exaggerated the North Korean nuclear power

In fact, since the time of George W. Bush, imperialism has been exaggerating the supposed North Korean military power to have the justification to continue strengthening its military presence in South Korea and throughout the region. Each North Korean “threat” has served to increase its presence in troops, aircraft, and ships in a key region, when it is suspected that North Korea does not have the nuclear and missile power that it declares and that, if it were used, it would end quickly since it is a country very backward in infrastructure and industrial technology.

Since 1953, the United States has a permanent military presence, with nearly 40,000 troops installed in bases in South Korea, its beachhead in Southeast Asia. The historical framework is the division of Korea into two countries, produced after World War II. In 1950 a war began between South Korea–USA, on one side, and North Korea–China, on the other. The war ended with the armistice of 1953, without peace being signed. This consolidated the partition and subsequent conflicts.* Imperialism has long declared the North Korean regime one of the “axes of evil”. They use this label to justify their arms investment and their role as global cop.

The capitalist dictatorship of Kim Jong comes out as a great winner

The most favoured out of the Singapore summit is Kim Jong-un and his dictatorial regime. He comes out of the summit recognized, legalized, and with open negotiations for investments and other economic concessions. North Korea is a poor country that has suffered severe famines in the 1990s, with millions of deaths not only for the imperialist blockade but also because of the mismanagement of a dictatorship of a millionaire Stalinist bureaucracy full of privileges that led the country to disaster.

That is why the dictatorship lives using the “blackmail” of its “nuclear industry” and its “trials” to seek a negotiation with Yankee imperialism, to get concessions such as the delivery of massive food (which happened several times, under the Clinton administration) and seeking to agree on a capitalist and commercial status like those of China or Vietnam.

In North Korea the bourgeoisie was expropriated after World War II. But since then a single-party dictatorship has been installed in power, which has ruled with an iron fist for over 60 years. It is a “communist dynasty”, since it began led by Kim Il-Sung, grandfather of the current president, young Kim Jong-un, who inherited the office from his father, the murderer Kim Jong-il.

In reality, this dictatorship has nothing of communist or socialist, except the name. Since the 1990s a course of capitalism restoration has begun following the example of its Chinese neighbour and adviser. With salaries of us$ 60-80, without unions or the right to strike, direct foreign investment was authorized since 1999. Thus, Chinese capitalist companies were installed in the north of the country. In the south, a complex agreed with South Korean multinational Hyundai was created and in the rest of the country there are already investments by Fiat, Siemens, and capitals from Russia, Pakistan, Singapore, and Thailand. They turn to the mining sector, oil, nuclear energy, appliances, railways, and so on, with “difficulties” for the capitalists because of power cuts and poor infrastructure (there are less than 10 percent of roads paved).

The entrance of capitalism has only deepened the social inequality and the misery of the North Korean masses. Meanwhile, on the other hand, there are new rich people called “tonju”, which translates as “Money Masters”. Nothing favourable came from this summit in Singapore for the North Korean people or for the peoples of the world.

* See article by Mercedes Petit, El Socialista No. 169, 30 June 2010.

Miguel Sorans is a leading member of the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)

The International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU_FI) released the following statement on the recent massacre by the Israeli army. We express our solidarity with the victims and their families as well as the Palestinian people who continue to confront the racist, reactionary Apartheid state of Israel on a daily basis.-SC

The Zionist army criminally suppressed what is known as The Great Return March, a pacific demonstration of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The world repudiates the massacre of over 60 Palestinians. Among them children, and over 2,000 injured. The Israeli army shot and machine-gun fired thousands of unarmed Palestinians.

During the six weeks up to the Nakba (catastrophe), the day of Israeli occupation in 1948, this march took place. A pacific march to repudiate the provocative installation of the yank embassy in Jerusalem and it demands the right to return of all those refugees that wish to go back to their homes.

On Tuesday 15th, in every city in the West Bank, in the east of occupied Palestine, and the Gaza Strip, a general strike is being conducted to condemn the genocide of Israel, supported by Trump and the US. Everywhere in the world, the condemnation to this new criminal act of Zionism grows. Even the EU pronounced against this massacre, though they did not do anything to stop it.

We in the IWU-FI join the international condemnation and call for unified actions of repudiation to these crimes by the racist and Zionist State of Israel. The world governments must break diplomatic relationships with Israel.

Stop the massacre in Gaza! Stop the criminal suppression to the Palestinian people! Freedom to all Palestinian prisoners! Down with the apartheid State of Israel! Only one secular democratic and non-racist state of Palestine will bring peace to the region. Out imperialism of Palestine and all Middle East!

We publish here a statement by the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI) on the recent state repression carried out by President Daniel Ortega. Our solidarity with the victims of his brutal regime and those fighting in the streets demanding his resignation.-SC

Throughout Nicaragua, a popular rebellion has started against the repressive regime led by Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, current vice-president. the trigger which sparked off the protests has been the announcement of a pension reform, in line with what IMF claims. This reform reduces by 5 percent the pensions and increases the employer’s contributions, which is a clear attack on the social security of the Nicaraguan working class.

Thousands took to the streets to protest in all the country. In Managua, Leon, Estelí, on the Atlantic Coast workers, college students and pensioners protest.

The answer of the “Sandinista” government of Daniel Ortega was to launch a brutal and criminal repression against the protesters. With the army and the police using live ammunition. 30 people dead, 67 injured, 43 missing and tens of people detained by police during the four day-protest, so far. According to a report, there are over twenty dead in Managua and in two neighbouring municipalities. Three dead in Masaya, two in Leon, two in Esteli and one in Sebaco. Local television reported the death of Angel Eduardo Gahona, a journalist, while he was covering the protests in Bluefields city on the Atlantic coast.

On Saturday 21, Daniel Ortega spoke on national television surrounded by the military and members of his Cabinet. Cynically, he said that there was “the right to protest” in Nicaragua but if this is “violent, then it does not have God’s forgiveness”. He said so after sending the military and the police to fire against protesters. The only violence there, is his dictatorial regime that starves the people and rules in agreement with the IMF and the bosses.

He denounced, without giving names, that the protests are encouraged by politicians critical of his Government, who receive funding from “extremist sectors” in the States. They would do so to “sow terror, insecurity and destroy the image of Nicaragua after 11 years of peace”. With that, he repeats the same lies of the fake “progressive” governments like Nicolás Maduro, from Venezuela, who has been denouncing an alleged “economic war” and “coup” plans of imperialism, while he has been starving the people and agreeing with oil multinationals.

The Government of the Sandinista Daniel Ortega is also a Government of doublespeak. He maintains the acronym FSLN (Sandinista Front of National Liberation) of the anti-Somoza 1979 revolution, which he eventually betrayed, but to rule for the upper classes. It is, in fact, a dictatorship that maintains the Government with fraudulent elections. Daniel Ortega favours his relationship with the businessmen from the Private Business Upper Council (COSEP) and the financial oligarchy. He imposes on the people the same policies that right-wing liberal pro-Yank governments like Macri in Argentina or Santos in Colombia do.

That is the reason why the Nicaraguan people hate the Ortegas’ government. They took to the streets and pulled down “the trees of life” (metal structures that cost a fortune) that Rosario Murillo built to embellish Managua and other parts of the country. A situation that resembles the moment where the people pull down the tyrant’s statutes.

Now, a startled Ortega speaks of “rounds of talks” but with the employers. The only way out is to follow the popular mobilization to end pension reform and, in this way, to defeat the repression and win the release of the detainees. In the way to succeed in Nicaraguan workers, peasants and youth’s central struggle, i.e., to end this repressive Daniel Ortega’s government of the bosses and to impose a government of the workers and the people.

A new government that breaks with the IMF, the bosses and the financial oligarchy and launches an emergency economic plan for popular sectors.

From the IWU-FI, we call for the international solidarity of the peoples of the world to support the fight of Nicaraguan people to stop the criminal repression of Ortega. We call political, union and student organisations to speak in that sense. In particular to those organisations of the left and anti-imperialist.

Stop the criminal repression of Ortega’s government!Down with the pensions reform! Stop the austerity plans against the people! We support the struggle of the Nicaraguan people!

INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ UNITY-FOURTH INTERNATIONAL (IWU-FI) |22 April 2018

Peoples’ strikes and rebellions go through the world. Demanding fair wages, health care, public free education, in defence of the environment and the life of entire populations hit by multinationals, decent housing, among others.

These millions fight confronting the hard austerity plans the imperialism and the bourgeoisie in each country applied over the shoulders of the oppressed people. The present chief of the yanki imperialism, the ultra-reactionary Donald Trump, heads this counter-offensive of the capital.

The crisis of the capitalist-imperialist system is leading to an inexorably social collapse to thousands of millions in the planet. The multinationals plunder the natural resources and advance in the depredation of nature, polluting the environment. They pretend the humble people, the workers, the popular sectors, the oppressed women, the youth, the peasants and the middle classes, increasingly impoverished, to be the ones who pay for the crisis they have caused.

But the peoples of the world do not give up. They mobilise and resist these austerity and plundering plans. Strikes in France, Germany, Greece, Turkey. In different countries in Latin America, China and South Africa. Hundreds of thousands marching for the independence of Catalonia. The 8 March was a clear proof of the world rebellion women are carrying out, for their rights, adopting the fighting method of the working class: the strike. Palestinian people do not give in to their historical fight against the Zionist State of Israel. 2018 started with demonstrations in Tunisia, cradle of the revolutions that were initiated in 2011, in Northern Africa and the Middle East.

In this situation, the crisis and absence of a revolutionary leadership is still the biggest problem for the working and popular classes. The mass mobilisations are betrayed by the political neo-reformist leaders that make a pact with the bourgeoisie and their plans. One of the clearest examples is Syriza in Greece that, under the label of “anti-capitalism”, reached power to betray and negotiate with the IMF and the multinationals. That same path is Podemos in the Spanish State taking. In the same way, the “progressive” projects in Latin America failed, with the class conciliation governments of Chavism-Maduro, Lula-PT, Kirchnerist Peronism or Evo Morales.

The social downfall in Venezuela has revealed the hypocrisy of the “Socialism of the 21st Century”, proclaimed by Hugo Chavez. It has been demonstrated again, that there will be neither progress nor socialism for working people if these governments negotiate with multinationals, capitalists and the financial sector. We must break with these capitalist structures.

We witness the tragic isolation of the Syrian revolutionary process initiated in 2011. The great majority of the world left turned their backs to them, defending, in fact, the butcher Bashar al Assad. They even regard as “progressive” the reactionary support of Putin or the Iranian theocratic regime. We support the uprising and revolutionary processes that have convulsed Northern Africa and the Middle East. We witness the permanent betrayal of the union bureaucracies, tied to those political bourgeois and reformist apparatuses.

In front of this, there are thousands and thousands of worker and popular fighters in the world, looking for a leadership alternative. We, the revolutionary socialists in the IWU-FI, believe that the way out to the capitalist exploitation is still the fight to bring workers governments to power and a socialist society. We still believe in the old slogan of the First International: “The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”. For that, it is necessary to build revolutionary parties.

As the example was handed down to us by the glorious Russian Revolution in 1917. We know there are left organisations that have capitulated to the system and have abandoned those ideas. We also know there are militants and organisations in the world that vindicate the relentless fight for the power of the workers and the socialist revolution. We address to them.

All of us who constitute the IWU-FI are convinced that the solution to the leadership crisis will not come from a unique organisation. We reject any form of self-proclamation. For this reason, we look for minimum revolutionary agreements that can draw us closer and join with currents, groups and revolutionary sectors from different experiences and traditions. It is indispensable the building of a revolutionary international that can contribute to solving the leadership crisis, in this complex and rich world situation.

In this sense, we are open to explore any kind of political exchange and conduct a common intervention in the class struggle towards a regrouping of revolutionary socialist forces based on a minimum revolutionary programme that we submit for consideration. To start a process of debates and experiences in the class struggle, as it will be the way to verify agreements and disagreements.

Proposal of a minimum revolutionary programme

Support to struggles against capitalist austerity plans! Support to all workers, peasants, native, students and popular struggles against imperialism and its governments. Against massive layoffs, wages and pensions cuts. In defence of education and health public services against privatisations and cuts. The crisis must be paid by the capitalists. No to the payment of the debt. Expropriation of the multinationals, the banks and the strategic companies.

No to imperialist aggression in the world! We support the struggles of all the peoples in the Middle East and Northern Africa against dictatorships. A special Solidarity to the struggle of the Palestinian people against the Zionist State of Israel!

For the peoples’ rights to self-determination (Catalan, Kurds, Saharawis and others)

Against criminalisation of the protest, for union independence from governments and the state. Down with union bureaucracy! For new anti-bureaucratic union leaders and for workers’ democracy!

All the support to women’s struggles around the world!

We fight for the political emancipation of the working class; no to the support to bourgeois governments. For workers’ governments with complete popular and workers’ democracy. To move forward to Socialism.

For a revolutionary International and for revolutionary parties in each country.

International Executive Committee of the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI), March 2018.

Ordered by the ultra-reactionary Donald Trump, the US, UK and France launched a criminal attack with missiles over places near the capital Damascus and Homs, in Syria.

They justify this attack as a retaliation for the chemical attack perpetrated by the dictator Bashar al Assad over Douma.

Our socialist current, the IWU-FI, has spent years repudiating Bashar al Assad dictatorship and his genocidal actions against Syrian people, military supported by reactionary Putin and the Ayatollahs regime of Iran.

That is why we also condemned al Assad bombing with chemical weapons over the city of Douma a few weeks ago.

Douma and the neighbourhoods of Ghouta are being subjected to a ferocious siege since 2013 and systematically bombed.

The regime and its allies bomb hospitals and civilians.

IWU-FI has been reporting on the permanent imperialist intervention of the US, together with the NATO and their allies, the petrol Arab monarchies and the Zionist State of Israel.

In this way, they support his military aggressions against the people in the Middle East, Syria, Iraq and, especially, against the heroic Palestine people.

Now we repudiate the bombing ordered by Trump.

We do not acknowledge imperialism any right to pretend “justice” is served in this way.

Yank imperialism is the largest killer in history, with invasions and aggressions everywhere in the world.

We reject the hypocritical statements by the ultra-reactionary Donald Trump speaking about “humanism” and calling al Assad “a dictator”.

It is not the first time the US bomb Syria for “an hour”.

It happened with Obama in 2014 and with Trump a year ago.

Their actions are a smokescreen to show they are the world police and to hide that, in fact, they support al Assad, together with Russia and Iran.

They have been years negotiating and agreeing military actions with Russia with the argument of “defeating terrorism” in order to support the dictator Bashar al Assad who, since March 2011, saw his power at risk as hundred of thousand of Syrian people took to the streets.

Besides, Trump lets the Turkish Erdogan regime to massacre the Kurdish Syrian, in accordance with the killers al Assad and Putin.

We call the people of the world and the political, union, students and left organisations from around the world to express their disapproval to the imperialist bombing.

We also call to repudiate Assad regime and Putin and to express solidarity with the Syrian people.

Over 150 dead and 1,000 injured was the result of a new chemical attack on the city of Douma, in Ghouta, this weekend.

This city is one of the areas controlled by militias opposed to dictator Bashar Al Assad.It is considered strategic, as it is near Damascus, capital of the country.The chemical attack is part of the genocidal counter-offensive of Al Assad and his allies Russia and Iran. His aim is to do away with resistance and to strengthen the dictatorship.

The Syrian army and its allies launched an offensive to conquer the region in February.Over 1,600 civilians died in the last weeks, thousands were injured and an estimation of over 130,000 flew for the violence in the region.Douma and other neighbourhoods in Ghouta are subjected to a ferocious siege since 2013 and constant bombings.The regime and their allies shell hospitals and civilians.

Only this year, at least three chlorine attacks have been registered, when it was assumed that Al Assad had “surrendered” all chemical arsenal.

We also reject the hypocritical statements of. “Repudiation” from the ultra-reactionary Donald Trump. He allows Erdoban’s Turkish regime massacre the Syrian Kurds, in agreement with Al Assad and Putin.

We call for the international solidarity with the people of Douma, in Ghouta, criminally attacked by Al Assad and his armed forces.We demand to cease the chemical attacks and the cease of shelling.At the same time, we insist on the military interventions of Russia, Iran, US, Europe and the regional powers should retire.